


Going Under

by calicokat



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-09
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-02-28 19:27:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2744312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calicokat/pseuds/calicokat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia Martin is a scientist for a bioengineering firm, one exactly as reputable as Resident Evil's Umbrella Corporation. The bioweapon of the future? Werewolves. From Lydia's point of view their test subjects tragically used to be human but their humanity has been eaten away by a supernatural contagion.</p><p>Famously dangerous and dangerously charming Subject 5 tells her something that changes her completely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going Under

**Author's Note:**

> For Pydia Pack Mom.

"Lydia," the man swamped in metal restraints says, arresting her mid-step. She turns back to him, heart pounding against her ribcage. His blue eyes open wider. "Can I call you Lydia?"

"How do you know my name?"

His lips form a silent 'o' and his face softens, only for a brow to inch up and sarcasm to color his voice:

"It's a trick I picked up called 'I can read.' I have an investment in reading all those charts you sign off on. See, I wanna know what you people plan to do to me next."

She doesn't ask how he reads them from across a room. She knows his eyesight is better than human.

Her stomach twists at the thought of her subjects knowing, dreading what happens to them next. She didn't think it was possible. She holds the clipboard defensively to her chest, cautiously holding his lucid, mesmerizing gaze.

"What do you want?"

"To talk. Maybe a little human kindness. Think you can manage that?"

She knows better. She knows all about 5 – how sane he sounds when the virus raging inside him doesn't have him in the grips of rage and delusion.

She doesn't move. He looks so earnest and sounds so self-aware she'd hate herself if she left; hears herself saying stiffly:

"I have a minute."

"Thank you, Lydia," 5 says, sounding like such a gentleman she imagines, for a moment, the inhuman anger, the equipment-rattling, animal roar and slurred threats could never come from the same man. "My name is Peter Hale," he says, lips twisting in annoyance as she holds her silence. "Listen, Lydia. Are you listening?"

Irritation of her own rears up at the way he keeps saying her name; the way it's creeping under her skin.

"I'm still here, aren't I?"

"You people have a habit of tuning me out," he says, flippant. He rolls his eyes and goes on: "You think there's something wrong with me. You think I'm sick. You even think I killed those people _because_ I'm sick, not because I've been tortured well beyond anybody's limits – even somebody used to being a werewolf. I am. You see, Lydia, I've been a werewolf since I was born."

"No," she answers immediately. "You may think that right now, _Peter,_ but that's impossible."

She startles at the realization he already has her calling him by a human name. She can see why they've all been warned and warned again about 5.

She only wanted to turn the manipulative emphasis on 'Lydia' around on him. Obviously, from his unabashedly sly smile, that's exactly what he wanted.

He drops the smile. Suddenly there's pain in his eyes, a vulnerability she knows is a trick – the genius of a madman.

It _has_ to be a trick.

"My name is Peter Hale, I'm from Beacon Hills, California, and I've always been a werewolf. They know this. That's why I'm here, Lydia. My sister, Talia, was Subject 0, and she's dead."

The maddening way he keeps saying her name, like a spell binding her to whatever humanity he has left...

 _'They',_ Lydia thinks. The kind of shadowy superentity psychotic people are constantly dreaming up.

"I believe you," she says with a sigh. "I believe your name may have been Peter Hale. You may even be from Beacon Hills…"

Fear crawls into her again. She's from Beacon Hills, and he has to know that. He has to have heard that. He sounds so honest, but he can't be.

There were Hales in Beacon Hills, but the big Acadian French mansion at the edge of the preserve has been abandoned for years.

Except, how would he know _that?_

"You're sick," she stresses. "You have a virus, and you're insane. I'm sorry: There's no cure."

"I get that part, Lydia. Yes, it's a virus – except I was born with that virus and I'm _not_ insane. I'm going to need a lot of therapy when I get out of here, but that's on you."

"I'm sorry," she repeats numbly. His brow twists in pain and suddenly she can't stand to be here listening to him sound so rational or look so hurt anymore. "I'm sorry, I have to go." 

She turns away from him, reinforced door whisking open in front of her as she flees the room, heels clicking crisply on the metal floor. 

She's struggling to keep her composure, can't escape quickly enough not to hear his broken voice crying after hear, pleading her name.

It echoes in her ears as she marches herself back to her office.

She collapses in her chair, throwing her clipboard onto her desk.

She presses her fingers to her temples and fights the urge to rip up the order for blood analysis, remembering yellow tape strung across the corridor cordoning off the lab where Peter...5...escaped to kill seven of her co-workers.

She just can't stop thinking: 

_Peter Hale._


End file.
